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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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In this paper we show a significant contrast in the realization of the Minor Phrase-initial rise in Japanese as a function of the XP vs. nonXP status of the syntactic branching structure at the left edge of which the rise is located. Sentences examined consisted of a sequence of lexically unaccented nouns followed by an accented verb. F0 values of both the L and the H edge tones of Minor Phrase are found to be more extreme at left XP edge, understood to be a prosodic Major Phrase edge. These differences produce an initial rise at Major Phrase edge that is significantly larger than that at Minor Phrase edge.
Bibliographic reference. Selkirk, Elisabeth / Shinya, Takahito / Sugahara, Mariko (2003): "Degree of initial lowering in Japanese as a reflex of prosodic structure organization", In ICPhS-15, 491-494.